It's time to recognize your fellow heroes! The Preeclampsia Foundation is announcing a call for nominations for Volunteer of the Year, an award to be presented on October 27, 2006 at our "Saving Grace: A Night of Hope" benefit. Read on for details and get your nominations in within the next 2 weeks!

Volunteer of the Year Award

To recognize the important role and valuable contributions of our volunteers, the Preeclampsia Foundation (Ã¢â‚¬Å“the FoundationÃ¢â‚¬Â) has established a Volunteer of the Year award, to be awarded annually to a member who epitomizes the true spirit of volunteerism. The award will be presented at Ã¢â‚¬Å“Saving Grace: A Night of Hope,Ã¢â‚¬Â a benefit gala to be held in San Francisco on October 27, 2006. The recipient will be provided with roundtrip airfare and a one night accommodation at the Mark Hopkins Hotel.

Eligibility:Members of the FoundationÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Board of Directors, as well as paid staff and contractors who are financially compensated by the Foundation are NOT eligible.

Nomination Process:All members are encouraged to submit a nomination with the following information:

- Contact information for nominator
- Name of nominee
- Contact information for nominee (address, phone number, email address)
- Length of service with Foundation
- A summary of why the nominee is deserving of the award in 350 words or less.

Nominations must be submitted to awards@preeclampsia.org by the deadline Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Friday, September 1, 2006.

Selection Process:

An awards committee will be responsible for selecting the winner. If a member of the committee is nominated, that person will be excused from the selection process. The committee will consider the following guidelines when evaluating each nominee:

Teamwork Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Nominee effectively collaborated in all activities and communications with a positive attitude and is respected by peers, volunteers and community leaders.
Advocacy Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Nominee represented the Foundation with unwavering support and strives to present the organization favorably in all endeavors.
Need - Nominee contributed a needed service to the Foundation.
Initiative - Nominee initiated new programs or activities and used new methods to solve problems.
Achievement - Nominee accomplished desired results.
Impact - The activity or service produced positive changes and provided examples for other areas of the Foundation.
Time - Amount of time devoted to the activity or service was significant.

Nominators may wish to address these categories in their summary and explain how the nominee fulfills any or all of these areas.

Notification:The winner will be notified via phone and email by Friday, September 8, 2006. A post in the Forum will be made after the winner is notified. All travel arrangements and hotel accommodations will be handled by the Foundation immediately thereafter.

There are so, so many deserving individuals! We look forward to seeing oodles of nominations.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Laura Muller has been chosen to receive the

2006 Hope Award for Volunteer of the Year!! [:D]

Laura became an active member of the Forum almost immediately after its inception in January 2003. Laura has shown unwavering commitment to it for over 3 years, treating it more like a part-time (sometimes full-time!) job. Although she ranks as one of the top contributors to our Forum with over 4,500 posts, her real contribution has been in the quality of her contributions, essentially creating a mission-critical piece of the Foundation's mission. Laura took the initiative to develop a vision for the Forum and has provided professional guidelines and practices along with training tools for Forum moderators which ensures that our Forum will continue to offer substantial, accurate and life-critical information.

Laura is also the first line of communication for patient and family crisis calls that are placed to the FoundationÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s toll-free number. She handles those with intelligence and empathy and ensures that each caller is given the support and direction that they are seeking. Laura also developed and presented an excellent presentation to an association of childbirth educators (an audience of over 50) on behalf of the Foundation proving that she handles herself professionally and proficiently as a credible representative of our organization.

LauraÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s guidance, words of wisdom and management have been unparalleled. Her service to the Foundation has definitely Ã¢â‚¬Å“raised the barÃ¢â‚¬Â and has created a standard of excellence for others to model. It is a widely held opinion that Laura is the reason the Forum is so successful and is the reason that so many women and their families find comfort within our organization. Through her tireless work for the Foundation, Laura is unquestionably deserving of the distinction of Volunteer of the Year.

Many thanks to all who contributed nominations for this inaugural recognition!

Just because I love this thread so much, I am moved to layer on more goodness!! and a virtual round of applause (anybody know where I can get that little clapping hands emoticon?)

As I said in our winner's announcement, many thanks to all those who took the time to nominate the candidates for Volunteer of the Year. But many thanks also go to all our volunteers who were nominated and stand in very good company with the winner, Laura Muller. Multiple nominations came in for these candidates, confirming that these individuals are truly respected among their peers and bring great hope and encouragement to the Preeclampsia Foundation and the thousands of families we serve.

The Foundation salutes all our Volunteer of the Year nominees: Catherine Brown, Julie Feller, Molly Laureto and Susan Steele-Moore!!

As we look forward to next year, we anticipate even greater participation. Volunteers will always be the lifeblood of this organization and we stand ready to salute the enormous contribution each of you make! We also heard from several of you that there was some confusion about who is "paid staff" and who is a volunteer, so that's something we'll have to be more clear about next year.